Tengo 20 anos!

Hola mis seres queridos!

This week has been amazing. (Not really, but I`m gonna be more positive). Haha! Alright well we did not have too much success this week when it comes to teaching. I think we taught less lessons this week then I`ve taught any other week in the mission. There`s an excuse though. Elder Tello and I got really sick. One day i woke up with my throat burning and my nose running like never before. It hurt to drink water. I worked through the day anyways. The next day Elder Tello woke up with the same sickness. So we stayed in the pension and slept ALL day. It sounds really nice, but not that great. Without air conditioning, the house gets pretty hot during the day. My throat was killing me that second day so i made one of the boxes of pudding that you sent me and ate the whole thing on the spot. Then about an hour later i made the other box and ate the whole thing. 9 CUPS OF PUDDING! Talk about happiness... We felt a little bit better the next day and decided to work through it because we had a full day of appointments. Luckily, every single one of our appointments failed and we taught like one lesson that day. It was incredible. Really though, it wasn`t that bad. We stayed positive and we`re almost completely better now.

Just in case you were wondering, yes, we did feel three really big earthquakes or aftershocks this week. I was laying in bed when the whole house started shaking and rattling. It was really strong, but not as strong as the original so I didn`t get up. My companion started yelling commands like usual ;) Then a minute later another one came and Elder Tello started yelling to us to ¨disfrutenlo¨ or enjoy it. So everyone just stayed still and felt it, me in my bed. It`s a weird feeling, but becoming pretty normal.

The day before my birthday I decided to forget my ¨diet¨ or whatever you want to call it and ate. I ate 3 sopapillas and 2 empanadas that night it was delicious. Then on my actual birthday we celebrated. The Saturday before we bought pork ribs, rice, onions, cake, ice cream, everything. Sunday night we had a feast and the whole house was decorated with my Pokemon birthday decorations. (thank you family). We ate Pork ribs marinated in some crazy sauce Elder Tello made, yellow rice and fried onions with eggs. Afterwards we ate the dessert I found, which was La Torta de Mil Ojas. Mom, you know exactly what I`m talking about. It was a cake made half of manjar and the rest of crispy pastry stuff. It was ridiculously good, especially with the half melted vanilla ice cream. It wasn`t such a good idea to eat so much at 11 at night though. Don`t worry, we took plenty of pictures and videos of it all. I`ll send them to you when I can.

One thing I forgot to mention was that at about 8pm on my birthday, all the power in Santiago went out. We were in the middle of a lesson with Daniel and Jacuelyn (who agreed to get married and baptized) when boom. DARKNESS... We taught for about another 10 minutes in the dark then wrapped it up. We went back to the pension, lit a bunch of candles, and started cooking my feast. At about 20 till 10 the power came back on and we celebrated. I`ll for sure never forget my 20th birthday.

The most spiritual experience I had this week actually occurred today. When everyone was taking their Preparation day naps I decided to study a little bit and started reading ¨For The Strength of Youth.¨ I read through the whole thing and realized how amazingly good that pamphlet is. Before the mission I struggled reading through a few pages of it and now I`m loving it. After reading it all I started reflecting on how I lived my life before and during the mission and decided to change a few things and set some goals for myself. It was an intense experience that came out of nowhere. All I know is that repentance is such a powerful tool and that it`s all possible through the atonement of Jesus Christ. I`m so grateful for this time I have to improve.

Well I love you all and miss you so much. I pray for you all the time. Thank you so much for all the love and support!

Love,
Elder Matthew Mooney